Nobody plans to have a deep conversation on a hiking trail.

But give thirty WNOWers six hours, a thousand steps, and nowhere else to be, and it just happens. Not all at once, not in some organised way. Just quietly, in twos and threes, somewhere between the top of the falls and the bottom. Nature does something. Movement does something. And before long you're talking to someone you met yesterday like you've known them for years.

Thirty men from eight chapters made the trip to Wentworth Falls at the end of May for the fourth WNOW retreat. They came from as far away as Orange and Terrigal. Different chapters, different backgrounds, different seasons of life. Some had been part of WNOW from the beginning. Others had only recently found their chapter. Most had never met.

By Sunday afternoon it felt like they'd known each other for years.

“Just a walk in the dark, which it turns out is a surprisingly good way to get thirty men talking honestly.”

It started on Friday night with head torches and a night hike through the bush. Not a team building exercise. Not a structured activity, in fact so unstructured that we may have got lost a few times. Just a walk in the dark, which it turns out is a surprisingly good way to get thirty men talking honestly. Something about not being able to see each other's faces properly. Something about the dark and the quiet and just walking that strips the small talk away faster than a heathen pouring a pint of Guinness.

Pairs and small groups formed in the dark. Conversations that started with "what chapter are you from" ended somewhere much further in. By the time we got back nobody was quite sure what had just happened, but the mood had shifted.

Then yoga. Which is where things got briefly, brilliantly ridiculous. A group of blokes discovering in real time exactly how inflexible three decades of not stretching makes you. Nobody cared. Everyone gave it a crack. Nobody pulled anything, which was fortunate because Saturday was going to punish the body considerably more.

As with every WNOW retreat, Saturday started at 6am. We found a local park which happened to be beside a lake, the perfect setting for Sunrise Club, but it's cold. Properly cold. Well it is if you're Australian.

Some light exercise, 60 push-ups for the 60 men who lose their lives every hour around the world, a little reflection and a warming coffee. Normally we'd finish with a dip in the ocean, or whatever body of water is closest. On this occasion that felt a little foolish. Unless you're Scottish or Irish, in which case a lake full of ducks at 6am in the Blue Mountains is apparently perfectly reasonable. Two of the boys got in. We don't think it was that cold but most of us weren't willing to find out.

Back to the accommodation. Cold plunge in the outdoor pool, which as it turned out was significantly colder than the lake and far less forgiving than the ducks. Breakfast. Pick up lunch. A vegan lunch, which raised a few eyebrows.

Then the main event.

Wentworth Falls is not a gentle hike, it's the kind where your knees remind you that yoga actually isn't that bad. Six hours. A thousand vertical stone steps down to the base of the falls, back up the same steps, a few wrong turns and onto the conservation hut, a quick stop for coffee and the warmth of the sun, and then down again to Empress Falls.

But here's the thing about walking somewhere hard with people you barely know. You stop noticing your knees pretty quickly. The same thing happens on the 60km Walk every year. The conversation absorbs everything else. By hour three, blokes who'd shaken hands for the first time on Friday night were deep in it. Not all of it serious. There's plenty of laughter, but there's also deeper conversations that tend to happen when you're moving and not overthinking.

“Thirty grown men jumping off rocks like eight-year-olds”

At the bottom of Empress Falls, we stripped off into our swimmers. Some even brought their WNOW branded budgies, the ultimate in living up to the WNOW mantra of dropping your body armour. What a sight it was, especially to the visiting tourist making the journey to this idyllic place. Thirty grown men jumping off rocks like eight-year-olds into ice-cold water with a waterfall hammering down on top of them. No matter what they thought, it turns out this is exactly what you need after six hours of steps.

Back at the accommodation, damp,comprehensively destroyed, but time to grab a cup of tea before the afternoon session.

Own your story.

Two hours. Paper and pens. Write or draw anything from any period of your life, then be brave enough to put it up on the wall. A single moment. A chapter. A lifetime. A triumph if you've got one. Most of what went up on the wall wasn't.

It's hard to describe what happens in a room when thirty blokes do this together. There's no big crescendo. It wasn't dramatic. It was quiet, super quiet. People walking around the room, reflecting on others' stories, some drawing comparisons, some just reflecting. What went up on the wall was honest in a way that only happens when the conditions are right.

“WNOW doesn’t create connection through a programme. It creates the conditions and gets out of the way.”

The conditions were right because the weekend had done its work. The dark, the wrong turns, the cold water and six hours of steps alongside people who started as strangers had already taken the walls down. By Saturday afternoon nobody needed convincing to be honest. The room just was.

WNOW doesn't create connection through a programme. It creates the conditions and gets out of the way.

That evening, a fire, and an opportunity to throw something in that you want to leave behind and move on from. Not a ceremony, that wouldn't be right for WNOW. Just a moment.

Some men burned what they'd put on the wall. Others wrote just one line. The burning act meaning whatever they wanted it to mean. WNOW isn't the kind of movement that sits in the dark places for too long, and soon the mood shifts again when the guitar came out.

Now for those that don't know, WNOW is not short of Irishmen, and let me tell you the Irish love a singalong. Turns out it's contagious regardless of nationality or vocal ability. With each song the mood continued to lift and nobody was in a hurry to go to bed.

None of this happens without the right person holding it together. Shane Brennan, one of our early members, facilitated the entire weekend and did it brilliantly. Special mention. Deserved.

"One of the best things I've done with WNOW." And the one that lands cleanest: "Amazing how 30 random blokes with random challenges from random backgrounds can bond so quickly."

That's not a retreat outcome. That's WNOW working exactly the way it's supposed to.

Oh and the food blew everyone away. Even the hardest carnivore couldn't dispute that.

The 2026 NSW retreat is done. The 2027 retreat will definitely have a waiting list.

See you at sunrise.

WNOW Sunrise Club - The retreat that’s not really a retreat 2026